For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.
I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.
For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It’s clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.
Ya, this pretty much me. I had a bad experience with the budget pixel. Wouldn’t recommend them… But otherwise haven’t really missed out on having a top end flagship phone at all.
Cheap smartphones are an incredible value. My wife bought a 180 EUR Realme 7 about 3 years ago, and it’s still working great, it’s plenty fast for everyday things (she’s not a gamer), has 8 GB RAM …
One thing you really need to compromise on are the cameras. But the problem is that I’m a sucker for cameras, so I keep buying expensive flagships …
I’ve purchased several budget/midrange phones as my daily driver, and the long term performance simply wasn’t worth it based on the things that I do with my phone.
Now, this is based on cheaper phones with specs from several years so this doesn’t hold true anymore.
I did it for a few months and really enjoyed it. At the end of 3 months, I realized I could achieve nearly the same thing by turning off all notifications except messages and calls and uninstalling all social media. I realized… if I have the willpower to use a dumbphone I have the willpower to keep the distraction off my smartphone. Phone usage is now 100% intentional with the right setup.
If I was not disabled with way too much time to burn, and where the weight of a phone is ideal, I would go back to a dumb flip phone like this. Smart phones are an addiction that, at best, must be consciously managed. Heck, I’m beside my workstation procrastinating right now.
As if we needed another sign that ZDnet was trash…
I fucking hate these obviously bullshit articles. “Gen Z is using feature phones”, “Gen Z are using paper maps”, “Gen Z is doing XYZ”.
No, they aren’t. At best some sad excuse for a journalist found a handful of tweets and wrote a whole article on it like it’s a “trend”.
Look, I know “journalists” are being squeezed to produce at an unreasonable rate but if you write drivel like this then you have no business calling yourself a journalist, hell I don’t even think you can call yourself a “writer” or “contributor” either. It barely passes as writing and you are contributing nothing to society.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !technology@lemmy.world
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I heard cassettes are making a comeback too.
I though genZ only bought iPhone because of the green bubble or something?
For the past 10 years I never bought a phone for more than 300 euros.
I usually get a new phone every 3 years to have the latest tech and donate or recycle the old one.
For the last year I had an iPhone 13 pro (usually goes around 1100 euro) as a work phone and my personal Redmi Note 11 Pro I bought for 270 euros and not once I told myself: Man, this iphone is at least 3 times better than my Xiaomi. It’s clearly a premium product but a middle category budget phone can match most features and even more. I still have a headphone jack, bigger 120 Hz screen, IR blaster and an amazing fingerprint sensor.
Ya, this pretty much me. I had a bad experience with the budget pixel. Wouldn’t recommend them… But otherwise haven’t really missed out on having a top end flagship phone at all.
Cheap smartphones are an incredible value. My wife bought a 180 EUR Realme 7 about 3 years ago, and it’s still working great, it’s plenty fast for everyday things (she’s not a gamer), has 8 GB RAM …
One thing you really need to compromise on are the cameras. But the problem is that I’m a sucker for cameras, so I keep buying expensive flagships …
I’ve purchased several budget/midrange phones as my daily driver, and the long term performance simply wasn’t worth it based on the things that I do with my phone.
Now, this is based on cheaper phones with specs from several years so this doesn’t hold true anymore.
I’m so tempted to do this.
I did it for a few months and really enjoyed it. At the end of 3 months, I realized I could achieve nearly the same thing by turning off all notifications except messages and calls and uninstalling all social media. I realized… if I have the willpower to use a dumbphone I have the willpower to keep the distraction off my smartphone. Phone usage is now 100% intentional with the right setup.
Nice!
If I was not disabled with way too much time to burn, and where the weight of a phone is ideal, I would go back to a dumb flip phone like this. Smart phones are an addiction that, at best, must be consciously managed. Heck, I’m beside my workstation procrastinating right now.
What’s the phone on the left in that top image?
Edit: turns out it isn’t a phone - it’s a Gameboy Advance SP.
As if we needed another sign that ZDnet was trash…
I fucking hate these obviously bullshit articles. “Gen Z is using feature phones”, “Gen Z are using paper maps”, “Gen Z is doing XYZ”.
No, they aren’t. At best some sad excuse for a journalist found a handful of tweets and wrote a whole article on it like it’s a “trend”.
Look, I know “journalists” are being squeezed to produce at an unreasonable rate but if you write drivel like this then you have no business calling yourself a journalist, hell I don’t even think you can call yourself a “writer” or “contributor” either. It barely passes as writing and you are contributing nothing to society.